Live from the Workbench 12-28-2016

Look, it’s the first 9pm update post! 😀

It’s been over a month since the last workbench update and while the blog might have been empty the workbench hasn’t been. (In fact most of the time it’s been near impossible to see the workbench under all the projects.)

Sculpting, molding, casting, painting… I got a little bit of everything done!

But I did all the Christmas gift-making up to the very last second and the blog and the workbench have been waiting for me to get home again. I’ve done some cleaning (at least to the point where I can see the table) and I’m ready to get the new year’s resolutions in gear a tad early.

So it’s time to look back at what’s happened and then look forward to what I hope will happen! 🙂

What Got Done

Adios Portrait Horse

I started a bunch of small projects since the last update, from paint chip ponies to props, but the only two I’ve finished have been the portrait horse and the first round of Fat Animal Magnets.

The portrait horse on the Adios mold was finished up and mailed off to her new home in early December. I spent a lot of hours (and a lot of layers of paint) trying to get her just right and thankfully, she was well received! I’m always a little paranoid about getting the portrait horses perfect and this one hit hiccups when it came time to photograph. She kept coming out overly red in the photos and the buyer had to take my word for the fact she looked okay.

But all’s well that ends well and she left me a lovely review! 🙂

The blog post for her should be up tomorrow if I can get things sorted out– I ended up buying some new Americana acrylic paints just to finagle the right colors for some of her highlights. More proof you can never have too much paint. 😉

Fat Corgis!

What’s eaten up most of my time in December was the Fat Animal Christmas magnets. I ended up sculpting and casting three each of twenty-one different animals… but I only managed to paint fifteen kinds in time for the holidays. Still, I had a blast and I’m planning on finishing up the rest of them in January.

I have more that need sculpting, but for the moment the animal count is: Orcas, sitting cats, dogs, armadillos, corgis, hippos, buffalo, hedgehog, bunny, dolphin, dragon, Norwegian Forest Cat, pony, Minpin (Miniature Pinscher), alligator, sleeping cat, giraffe, song bird, kittenloaf, sleeping fox, hawk, fox.

I’m not really sure how to post them to the blog since that’s sixty-three magnets (and counting!)… but I’ll think of something. 🙂

So What Next?

Looking forward to January, I have a bunch of things on my To-do list.

The Three Amigos stablemates from the last post are still here, mostly because I’ve been having issues waiting for days when I can safely spray sealer them. They are my next ‘high priority’ item and I’m hoping to have them photographed, approved, and shipped by the 15th. *crosses fingers*

Behind them a have a small army of partially finished Stablemates plus a bunch of custom orders. I’m going to be trying a lot harder to get these finished in a timely manner, since the 2016 section of the gallery is looking sadly anemic. 🙁

I also have lots of finished things that just need photographing and listing to Etsy… but it’s been that way for a while, so changing that habit will take some practice. I’ll like to back in the swing of weekly posting by the end of 2017, so wish me luck!